AI, Am I wasting my time?

sfc

Join Date 11/2006

AI, Am I wasting my time?

Hi, I'm a pretty new player to GCII, but a somewhat experienced strategy game player. I played a bit of the campaign, but got a bit bored, so I started up a "gigantic" map with about 9 opponents. I like big long games. I'm pretty sure I requested the intelligence be random, but it looks like all the computer AI is "Bright", or, at least, that's what it says on Stats page under MISC.

Anyway, my game has been going pretty well...maybe too well. At this point my economy, manufacturing (soc & mil) is almost twice as high as any of the other 7 opponents left (and only 3 of those opponents are doing well). If all three (or maybe just two of them) suddenly ganged up on me I might be in trouble. At the "Bright" intelligence level should I expect that? Or am I going to be able to easily pick them off one at a time. It seems they should have become more wary by now. It'll probably take me hours and hours to find this out for myself, but I'll be glad to do it if it turns out the AI is going to surprise me.

So, should I keep playing against my battered "Bright" opponents, or move up the intelligence ladder and get battered myself??

Thank you much for any help!

sfc

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OK, now its gotten silly.

In any event, back on topic:

Such as it is not capable of ganging up on a stronger opponent, not that Ive seen anyway

in the game Im playing right now in Dark Avatar, in my "manifest destiny" phase, I Initiated War with the pushover Krynn. Two turns in(which is still the very beginning of the war in DA, whereas in DL wars are over in two turns because of speed cheese), the Korath contacted me and told me that my attack on the Krynn has made them realize they might be next, and they declared war on me ( which is kind of scary, because they have some real hardware).

If this doesnt pretty much directly address Yamota's gripe about the weaker AI races "never ganging up to take out the more powerful player" , I dont know what does. Good news buddy, you can cross that one off your list.

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If this doesnt pretty much directly address Yamota's gripe about the weaker AI races "never ganging up to take out the more powerful player" , I dont know what does. Good news buddy, you can cross that one off your list.

Yes this is great news! But I couldnt possibly know about that since I just got DA and since Im at work I havent got the opportunity to explore the expansion. I cant play at work.. or can I?

It will be interesting if they have addressed the other shortcomings of the AI. Such as ship design and effectively defending its colonies during war.

Im all for multiplayer. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. But the above poster suggested that the fact that GC2 is as good as it gets for SP strategic AI was inconsequential because a human would be smarter.

Well what I meant was is that it isnt enough that the AI is better than other games AI since other games arent restricted to just playing against the AI. So for me its kinda moot argument that the AI is better than other games AI since its still not good enough to give me a challenge (without massive cheating).

But any reasonable person knows this, and if they wanted a multiplayer game, they probably wouldnt have purchased a decidedly single player game.

Unless ofcourse there are no other turn based strategy games of high quality that has been released in the past five years.

The only other similar game out there with multiplayer game is Sword of the Stars and altough it has two areas where it beats GC II, combat and multiplayer, it is otherwise an average game.

So either I can hope that the devs of that game makes it as good as GC II (not possible) or GC II adds a multiplayer option and/or continues improving the AI. Both of which are possible but not easy.

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I kept thinking about a way to say this earlier, but I really like a "roleplaying" AI. Before visiting this Forum I had never heard of AARs. I've always played TB games with a running "history" in my head, which I sometimes even wrote down. I'm glad to find out I'm not the only one doing this

That said, I like the idea of a "roleplaying" AI, even if it sacrifices a little strategy and tactical brains. I get into the game most when I feel there's a compelling "story" occuring. If I wanted pure strategy I could just play chess, right? All computer games are just number balancing. While I try to make intelligent mathematical decisions, I like to make decisions without thinking about all of the underlying math. It's nice if the AI can make it seem like it's doing that too.

In the same light, I completely agree with the Sticky Post about why there is no multiplayer. I've never played a TB game on multiplayer. I wholeheartedly agree that humans would be the most interesting opponents, but I simply can't arrange to meet with a group of people on-line on a regular basis for hours and hours, with the constant threat of one (or more) of them suddenly dropping out. So, personally, I'm really glad Stardock hasn't spent the additional resource and time on it.

Bingjack: That sounds great! Too bad they weren't able to include that story generator thing though. I was somewhat disappointed by screens at the end of a game. Not even a Civlization style "map over time" thing. And if you play "blind" and really want to reconstruct the history of the universe you'd have to load saved games and use cheats or something to figure out how those Drengins defeated the Iconians on the other side of the galaxy. Bleh.

Yagoda: So I took your advice and am playing on tough, a large map, 9 opponents, as the Torians. I don't know if homeplanets are the same each time, but I got a 10 with a precursor mine

And nearby to that was an Economy resource, and just a little farther out was a military resource! I doesn't look like I've thrown myself into the deep end of Tough to start with. I'm sure I can still screw things up, but otherwise I might try a few more tough games w/out such a great start.

sfc

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